WABE

WABE

City	Atlanta, Georgia
Broadcast area	Atlanta metropolitan area
Branding	90.1 FM WABE (FM & HD-1) WABE Classics (on HD-2) WABE News (on HD-3)
Slogan	Atlanta's home for the classics and NPR news
Frequency	90.1 MHz (also on HD Radio) 90.1 HD-2 for Classical music 90.1 HD-3 for News & Talk
First air date	September 13, 1948
Format	Public radio
ERP	100,000 watts
HAAT	334.1 metres (1,096 feet)
Class	C0 NCE
Facility ID	3538
Transmitter coordinates	33°45′32″N 84°20′07″W / 33.75889°N 84.33528°W / 33.75889; -84.33528Coordinates: 33°45′32″N 84°20′07″W / 33.75889°N 84.33528°W / 33.75889; -84.33528
Callsign meaning	Atlanta Board of Education
Affiliations	National Public Radio Public Radio International American Public Media
Owner	Atlanta Public Schools / Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative, Inc. (Board of Education, City of Atlanta)
Webcast	Listen live M3U
Website	www.wabe.org

WABE FM 90.1 is a radio station in Atlanta, Georgia, that is affiliated with National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI). WABE's format features mostly classical music, although the station will occasionally play a Beatles tune, a Broadway show tune, a film suite, or a selection from a film such as Star Wars, as long as the piece is in a classical-sounding arrangement. WABE-FM has lately added the short feature Atlanta Sounds (broadcast several times a day) and twice weekly previews of weekend events around the city. Beginning in 2009, its Sunday schedule changed from devoting equal time to news programs and classical music to broadcasting news programs during the daytime and playing classical music on Sunday evenings. It carries the NPR flagship programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered, with newscasts interjected periodically.

The station is licensed to the Atlanta Board of Education (hence the "ABE" in the broadcast callsign), although a non-profit umbrella corporation has been established to oversee the station's daily operations. The station's signal reaches practically all of the northwestern and north-central parts of the state. WABE is the dominant public radio station in metropolitan Atlanta; Georgia Public Broadcasting serves most of the remainder of the state with such programs.

WABE also broadcasts the Georgia Radio Reading Service and educational programming via subcarriers on its frequency.

History

WABE has always been operated by the city school system. The license was donated to the school board by the Rich's Foundation on September 8, 1948. It went on the air five days later as Georgia's first educational radio station. It also may well have been the first-ever noncommercial radio station in the Southern U.S., at least on the FM broadcast band. Its first radio studios were located in two rooms of the former Atlanta City Hall. The station moved, along with television station WETV (channel 30, now WPBA), into facilities in northeast Atlanta in 1958, where both stations remain to this day.

The school board used WABE strictly as a medium for educational (i.e., in-school) broadcasts until sometime in the early 1970s, when classical music broadcasts (and likely evening broadcasts also) premiered on the station. It was a charter member of NPR in 1971, and saw enough promise in the fledgling venture to cut educational programming to six hours a day. In 1974, it significantly boosted its transmission power to 30,000 watts. By 1982, the educational programs heard during school hours moved, thanks to the development of subcarrier technologies, to subchannels, leaving the main FM frequency free to broadcast music and news shows for adults.

The station finally expanded its hours to around-the-clock service and built a much more powerful transmitter on Stone Mountain allowing it to expand its power to a full 100,000 watts. It remained on Stone Mountain until 2004, when transmission moved to the TV tower next to sister station WPBA in the DeKalb County portion of East Atlanta. The short tower atop one of the highest points in metro Atlanta was and still is that of WGTV, the GPTV (now GPB TV) station for the area. WPBA had to leave when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced all television stations to go digital, and the tower was not strong enough to hold four antennae — the other being NOAA Weather Radio station KEC80. (A larger tower was out of the question, as it is scenic and within state-owned Stone Mountain Park.)

Since that time, WABE has grown steadily in listeners served, mainly because Atlanta is one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas, and the fastest-growing of the largest 15 or so media markets, now ranked seventh in potential radio listeners by Arbitron.

Programming

Well into the 2010s, WABE continued to air classical music during the day. As a result, many NPR programs that became mainstays after the network's rapid programming expansion in the 1980s, such as The Diane Rehm Show, Talk of the Nation, Here and Now, On Point, The Story with Dick Gordon and the BBC World Service were not heard in Atlanta until WABE launched an all-NPR news stream on its third HD subcarrier. Starting in 2015, in apparent response to WRAS picking up NPR news programming supplied by GPB Radio, WABE dropped daytime classical programming in favor of locally-based news programming.

However, WABE does air Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Fresh Air and Marketplace on its analog signal, during the morning and afternoon drive-time hours, and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, Mountain Stage, Only a Game and This American Life are heard on weekends. A full-time classical HD station is also available, as is Ahora, a Spanish-language channel, and all three channels stream live on the Internet.

Tell Me More and The Takeaway air on WABE's HD news channel, as well as on the analog signal of jazz station WCLK.

The station broadcasts the following HD Radio subchannels:

Channel	Callsign	Name	Programming
90.1FM	WABE-HD	90.1 FM WABE	Broadcast stream, News/Talk/Cultural
90.1-2FM	WABE-HD2	WABE Classics	Classical and other music
90.1-3FM	WABE-HD3	WABE News	News

Local Weekday Hosts

Steve Goss — joined WABE after 28 years at Peach 94.9 FM (WPCH, later WLTM) as local host of Morning Edition.

Lois Reitzes — longtime host of the morning classical-music program "Second Cup Concert" and of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra broadcasts. She came to WABE in 1979 from WFIU-FM in Bloomington, Indiana. Reitzes served as a classical-music host for WFIU while working toward a double major in piano and musicology at Indiana University. Reitzes is also an accomplished pianist.

Denis O'Hayer — the former political reporter for WXIA-TV and longtime news anchor at NewsRadio 640 WGST in Atlanta - anchors the afternoon drive time news block of The World, All Things Considered, and Marketplace.

Robert Hubert — a veteran of over two decades on WABE's staff, Hubert hosts the evening classical-music program Nocturne and serves as the station's music librarian. He also hosts Atlanta Music Scene, heard on Monday evenings during his regular program. On the weekends, Hubert can be heard on Concert90 and Aubade.

WABE reporters include: Jim Burress, Martha Dalton, Michell Eloy, Lisa George, John Lorinc, Rose Scott, Jonathan Shapiro and Michelle Wirth.

Local specialty program hosts

Herman H. Johnson — a legendary Atlanta broadcaster in his own right, he has hosted the Saturday-night Jazz Classics show since the late 1970s. Johnson, known only by his first initial (he has admitted on the air that his actual first name is Herman), for many years was a disc jockey on WAOK-AM, one of Atlanta's heritage African-American stations. The program's theme is a rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic by jazz artist and Episcopal clergyman Tom Vaughn.

Trivia

WABE's call sign was WPBA-FM for much of April 1984, at the same time WETV's call sign was changed to WPBA. The radio station's call sign was changed back in May because of confusion.

During the 1980s and 1990s the station's afternoon classical program was called Kaleidoscope, hosted by Jonathan Phelps.

In the Telltale Games video game series The Walking Dead, the character Carley is a reporter for WABE.

External links

Radio stations in the Atlanta, Georgia market

By AM frequency	550 590 610² 640 680 750¹♦ 790 (830) 860 890 920 970 1010² 1040 1080² 1100² (1120) 1160 1190 1230 1270 1290² 1300 1310 1320 1330 1340 1380 1400 1400 1410 1420 1430 1450 1460 1480 1500 1520 1550² 1570 1600² 1690 ¹Clear-channel stations with extended nighttime coverage ²Broadcast in Spanish (fulltime)

By FM frequency	88.1 88.5 89.1 89.3 90.1 90.7 90.7 91.1 91.5 91.7 91.9 92.1 92.9 93.3 94.1 94.5 94.9 95.5♦ 96.1 96.5 96.7♠ 97.1 97.5♣ 97.9 98.1 98.5 98.9 99.7 100.5 101.5 101.9² 102.3² 102.5 102.9 102.9♣ 103.3 103.7 104.1 104.7 105.3² 105.7♠ 106.7 107.1 107.5♣ 107.9 ♠WRDG simulcasts WRDA ♣WUMJ simulcasts W275BK ♦WSBB-FM simulcasts WSB AM

NOAA Weather Radio	162.550

By callsign	KEC80 WABE WAEC WAFS WALR-FM WAMJ WAOK WAOS WATB WAZX WAZX-FM WBCX WBHF WBZY WCFO WCHK WCLK WCNN WCOH WDCY WDPC WDUN WDWD WFGM WFOM WFSH-FM WFTD WGFS WGKA WGST WHIE WHTA WIFN WIGO WJGA-FM WJSP-FM WJTP WKHX-FM WKKP WLBB WLKQ-FM WLTA WMLB WMVV WMVW WNEA WNIV WNNX WNSY WPBC WPBS WPCG-LP WPLO WPZE WQXI WRAS WRDA WRDG WREK WRFG WSB WSB-FM WSBB-FM WSRV WSTR WTSH-FM WTZA WUBL WUMJ WUWG WVEE WVFJ-FM WWEV-FM WWPW WWWE WWWQ WXEM WXJO WXKT WYAY WYXC WYZE WZGC W233BF W243CE W250BC W255CJ W275BK

Internet radio	99X Atlanta WGHR

Defunct	WERD (860 AM) WGHR (102.5/100.7) WHLE-LP (106.3 FM) WTJH (1260 AM)

Satellite radio local traffic/weather XM Channel 227 Sirius Channel 153 Georgia radio markets Albany Atlanta Augusta Brunswick Columbus Macon Savannah Valdosta Other Georgia radio regions Rome Thomasville/Bainbridge Waycross See also List of radio stations in Georgia

NPR member stations in the state of Georgia

GPB stations	Albany WUNV Athens WUGA Augusta WACG-FM Brunswick WWIO-FM Carrolton WUWG Chatsworth WNGH-FM Dahlonega WNGU Demorest WPPR Folkston WATY Ft. Gaines WJWV Macon WMUM-FM Rome WGPB Savannah WSVH Tifton WABR Valdosta WWET Warm Springs WJSP-FM Waycross WXVS

Other stations	Atlanta WABE Atlanta WCLK Columbus WTJB Thomasville WFSL

See also List of NPR stations

See also adult contemporary classic hits college country news/talk NPR oldies religious rock sports top 40 urban other radio stations in Georgia

Public schools in Atlanta

High schools	Carver Commercial Douglass Girls' Grady Mays North Atlanta South Atlanta M. H. Jackson Therrell Washington

Middle schools	Brown Bunche Coan Harper-Archer Inman Kennedy King Long Parks Price Sutton Sylvan Hills Turner Young

Elementary schools	Adamsville Beecher Hills Benteen Bethune Blalock Bolton Academy Boyd Brandon Burgess/Peterson Campbell Capitol View Cascade Centennial Place Cleveland Ave. Connally Continental Colony Cook Deerwood Academy Dobbs Dunbar East Lake Fain Fickett Finch Garden Hills Gideons Grove Park Heritage Academy Herndon Hill Hope Humphries Hutchinson Jackson Jones Kimberley Lin Miles Morningside Oglethorpe Parkside Perkerson Peyton Forest Rivers Scott Slater Smith D. H. Stanton F. L. Stanton Thomasville Heights Toomer Towns Usher-Collier Heights Venetian Hills Waters West Manor White Whitefoord Williams Woodson

Non-traditional schools	APS/CEP School Alonzo A. Crim Open Campus High School West End Academy

Charter schools	Achieve Academy of Atlanta Atlanta Charter Middle School Charles R. Drew Charter School KIPP Academy Neighborhood Charter School SIAT Tech High School BEST Academy C. S. King Academy University Community Academy

Sports facilities	Lakewood Stadium Grady Stadium

Broadcasting	WABE FM 90.1 WPBA TV 30.1

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, April 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.